of the army who served against them is, that they were more dangerous enemies than the Indians, fighting the most skilfully and standing the longest.  The tax-commissioner before referred to, who was a resident of Charleston during the trial and execution of the confederates of Denmark Vesey, relates that one of the native Africans, when called to answer to the charge against him, haughtily responded,—­“I was a prince in my country, and have as much right to be free as you!” The Carolinians were so awe-struck by his defiance that they transported him.  Another, at the execution, turned indignantly to a comrade about to speak, and said, “Die silent, as I do!” and the man hushed.  The early newspapers of Georgia recount the disturbances on the plantations occasioned by these native Africans, and even by their children, being not until the third generation reduced to obedient slaves.

Nowhere has the deterioration of the negroes from their native manhood been carried so far as on these Sea Islands,—­a deterioration due to their isolation from the excitements of more populous districts, the constant surveillance of the overseers, and their intermarriage with each other, involving a physical degeneracy with which inexorable Nature punishes disobedience to her laws.  The population with its natural increase was sufficient for the cultivation of the soil under existing modes, and therefore no fresh blood was admitted, such as is found pouring from the Border States into the sugar and cotton regions of the Southwest.  This unmanning and depravation of the native character had been carried so far, that the special agent, on his first exploration, in January, 1862, was obliged to confess the existence of a general disinclination to military service on the part of the negroes; though it is true that even then instances of courage and adventure appeared, which indicated that the more manly feeling was only latent, to be developed under the inspiration of events.  And so, let us rejoice, it has been.  You may think yourself wise, as you note the docility of a subject race; but in vain will you attempt to study it until the burden is lifted.  The slave is unknown to all, even to himself, while the bondage lasts.  Nature is ever a kind mother.  She soothes us with her deceits, not in surgery alone, when the sufferer, else writhing in pain, is transported with the sweet delirium, but she withholds from the spirit the sight of her divinity until her opportunity has come.  Not even Tocqueville or Olmsted, much less the master, can measure the capacities and possibilities of the slave, until the slave himself is transmuted to a man.

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